But
there's no need to worry, according to NASA, because the
“distant pass” will still be taking place quite far away
– at 21 lunar distances.

“Asteroid Icarus will safely pass by Earth at more than 21
times the distance of Earth to the moon on June 16,” NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory said.

Icarus is expected to skim past Earth at 10 p.m. GMT.

The Slooh community observatory will provide a live
stream
of the asteroid's approach, using robotic telescopes and cameras.
However, the space rock will be too dim to be seen through most
backyard telescopes, the observatory said on its website.

The asteroid's pass with Earth is significant, as it will not
happen again until June 14, 2090. At that point, it will approach
Earth marginally closer at a distance of about 17 lunar distances
(four million miles).

In 1968, the space rock came as close as 16 lunar distances from
Earth. A year prior, 'Project Icarus' was launched, in which a
group of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) were tasked with designing ways to deflect or destroy the
asteroid if it was ever bound for a collision with Earth.

Discovered in 1949,
Icarus was one of the first near-Earth asteroids to be
detected.

The asteroid's pass with Earth comes just one week after doomsday
theorists made headlines, predicting civilization would meet its
demise sometime between September 22-28.

The panic prompted a statement from NASA, which said the
prediction was unfounded.

“NASA knows of no asteroid or comet currently on a collision
course with Earth, so the probability of a major collision is
quite small. In fact, as best as we can tell, no large object is
likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred
years,” a NASA spokesperson said at the time.